[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 43 (Thursday, March 18, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            A VIRGINIA GENTLEMAN--RAYMOND R. ``ANDY'' GUEST

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 18, 1999

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to share with our colleagues a recent 
editorial from The Winchester Star which so eloquently speaks about a 
true ``citizen-legislator,'' Raymond R. ``Andy'' Guest of Front Royal, 
who has announced his retirement as a delegate in the Virginia General 
Assembly, where he served for nearly three decades.
  I am proud to call Andy Guest my constituent and friend, and am 
grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him in public service 
to so many of the constituents we share from the Shenandoah Valley. On 
behalf of those people of the Valley, I wish Andy and His wife, Mary 
Scott, all the best wherever his path now as ``citizen'' leads.

               [From The Winchester Star, March 2, 1999]

      Virginia Gentleman--Guest Personified Legislative Tradition

       It comes as no small surprise that when the time came for 
     Raymond R. ``Andy'' Guest Jr. to announce his retirement from 
     the General Assembly he was ``overwhelmed'' by ``the history, 
     the tradition'' that surrounds anyone in Virginia's State 
     Capitol. But then, Andy Guest is not ``anyone''; 28 years a 
     man of the House, he was emblematic of that tradition the Old 
     Dominion so admires in her lawmakers, that of ``citizen-
     legislator.''
       ``To continue that tradition was a great honor.'' Mr. Guest 
     said Sunday, roughly 24 hours after announcing his intention 
     to leave the House, and the people, he served for nearly 
     three decades.
       However, the tradition to which he stood heir goes deeper 
     than ties to Virginia. In a real sense, he was to the manner 
     born; his father, Raymond Sr., also served in the General 
     Assembly and was U.S. ambassador to Ireland. Thus, as his 
     wife, Mary Scott, succinctly said. ``He was born to be a 
     public servant.''
       And, as a public servant, he will be dearly missed, by his 
     peers no less than his constituents. Among the men and women 
     with whom he engaged in the legislative hurly-burly he will 
     be remembered as the gentleman he is.
       ``Sometimes we use the word . . . a little too freely,'' 
     said House Speaker Thomas W. Moss, D-Norfolk, with whom Guest 
     often tangled, ``but I've never known him to be anything but 
     a gentleman.''
       Likewise, said state Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr., R-
     Winchester: ``We have lost a good man. His integrity and 
     character exude the class that typifies a Virginia gentleman. 
     He leaves a void that will never be replaced.''
       That ``void'' is considerable, in that Mr. Guest's voice 
     was one of clear common sense and consistent conservatism, 
     particularly of the fiscal variety. In his last session, he 
     raised words of concern about the manner in which the state 
     treats its surplus revenue (see editorial above). He is 
     worried, as are we, that these dollars will be used to ``grow 
     the government,'' rather than as a tool to fund needed 
     capital expenditures.
       Such a concern was true to form. As a minority member of 
     the legislature for most all his 28 years in the House--he 
     was minority leader for six of them--Mr. Guest often found 
     himself ``chipping away'' at the system in hopes that it 
     would run better. Frequently, this took the form of 
     legislation that bore witness to the needs of his 
     constituents in the northern Valley. He relished in his 
     efforts to make the bureaucracy respond to these needs and to 
     ``see things get done.''
       To be sure, Mr. Guest also will be remembered for his 
     courage in combating lymphatic cancer while maintaining a 
     watchful eye on the General Assembly's proceedings from his 
     Richmond hospital bed. Thankfully, he says his decision to 
     leave the House is not health-related, but simply predicated 
     by a desire to attend to family and business interests and 
     to, as they say, ``smell the roses'' a bit, perhaps while 
     dove hunting and fly fishing, two particular loves.
       His wife, Mary Scott, says that having Andy at home on more 
     or less a regular basis will translate into more 
     opportunities to enjoy the company of friends, sans the 
     demands that politics brings.
       ``I'll be able to say . . . `Let's have dinner on Friday or 
     Saturday night and we won't have to talk politics,' '' Mrs. 
     Guest said.
       Without a doubt, she knows her man far better than we, but 
     we suspect that politics will never stray too far from the 
     mind of Andy Guest. Citizen-legislators may retire, but when 
     ``tradition'' is born in the blood, the passion seldom 
     expires. Nor does the legacy, which, in this case, is 
     considerable.

     

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